


Hit and Miss

by emungere



Series: Ain't Seen the Sunshine [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-03
Updated: 2011-09-03
Packaged: 2017-10-23 09:15:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/248671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emungere/pseuds/emungere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John's nightmares were not memories. That was something to be grateful for. He often reminded himself of that when they were bad: he could still say to himself, <em>it was only a dream</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hit and Miss

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to louiselux for helpful advice. For the moment, unbetaed and unbritpicked, read at your own risk.
> 
> Related blog entries: [head on](http://boringlifeofjohnwatson.blogspot.com/2011/08/head-on.html) and [untitled](http://interestingmurders.blogspot.com/2011/08/this-morning-before-it-was-light-when.html).

John woke with a sore throat, a fading memory, and Lestrade pressed as far away from him as the confines of their shared sleeping bag would allow.

A voice from a neighboring campsite said, quite clearly: "What the fuck was that?"

There were more noises, tent zips being pulled open, someone suggesting they call the police. John closed his eyes. Ten seconds. Just ten seconds to pull himself together and then he'd get up and explain, reassure everyone and deal with their silent or not so silent judgement. He hoped, so hard it clenched his fingers and tightened his jaw, that he hadn't said anything intelligible.

A warm hand brushed his arm and pressed him down. "Stay put," Lestrade said. He was working himself free of the sleeping bag.

"You don't have to, I'm going. Just. Three more seconds."

Lestrade kissed his shoulder as he stood. "Stay. Put."

John felt this must be another sort of dream entirely, but he nodded. Lestrade slipped out, and shortly John heard his voice, low and reassuring. He tried not to listen.

"John?"

Two small, sleepy, worried faces looked at him through the open tent flap. He dredged up a smile and beckoned them in. Sherlock dug around in the sleeping bag until he found Spider and then sat himself in John's lap, with Spider in his arms. Mycroft knelt next to him, uncertain, picking at the cuffs of his pyjamas. They were new. Mycroft had felt, no doubt correctly, that his voluminous white night shirts would get him teased within an inch of his life at Harrow.

John put an arm around each of them. "Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to wake you."

"What did you dream about?" Sherlock asked. "You were really loud."

"Afghanistan."

"What about it?"

"I'm not going to tell you."

Sherlock frowned. "I always tell you my bad dreams."

"This is different," John said. "This is...like Lestrade not letting you see crime scene photos. You don't want this sort of thing in your head." Sherlock took a breath to protest, and John cut him off. "All right, I don't want this sort of thing in your head. It's not happening, Sherlock. Full stop."

"Do you want one of the dogs to sleep in here?" Mycroft said. "Deimos hardly drools at all."

John smiled more easily this time, and squeezed his shoulder. "No thanks. I'll be all right." He heard Lestrade's footsteps returning and the rustle of fabric as the campsite retreated into their various tents. "Back to sleep now," he said. "It was just a dream, and we've got lots to do tomorrow."

He sent them out just as Lestrade crawled back in. There was a moment of silence.

"All right?" Lestrade said, finally.

"Yeah. Just. Need some air," John said, and bolted.

John's nightmares were seldom memories. That was something to be grateful for. He often reminded himself of that when they were bad: he could still say to himself, _it was only a dream_.

They were based in reality, of course. The oven-hot air, the flaying wind, the powdery dust shot through with grit; those were real. The rattle of distant gunfire and the crack and pop of bullets so nearby he could hear them break the sound barrier. The children begging for pens or candy, or looking up at him with wide, steady eyes while he tried to keep them alive on the flight back to Bastion. Real.

But not specific children. Not specific soldiers. He didn't dream of his mistakes, perhaps because he'd given them so much thought in waking life. Sometimes that was helpful. Sometimes it was not.

Tonight, it was not. Tonight he'd got out of the MERT Chinook at a run to find his patient lying, small and crumpled, with half his side blown away. Always bad. Young, which was worse. Mycroft. Which was apparently more than he could cope with.

That was when he'd woken up, screaming for morphine, because that was the only treatment he could remember. Everything else had gone out of his head, and his team were staring at him from the helicopter, blank, uncaring.

So, obviously the solution was to post about it on the internet. John shook his head at himself the entire time he was tapping out an entry on his mobile, but he still did it.

And then he went back to the tent. He hoped Lestrade would be asleep and knew he wouldn't be.

"All right?" Lestrade said, more cautiously than last time, as if John were a weapon with the safety off. "Sorry. I said that."

"Still a valid question."

"Well then. Are you?"

"I will be." John climbed back into the sleeping bag with him.

"Want to talk about it?"

"No," John said, automatically.

"Yeah, right. So. Sleep?"

"I-- I miss it," John said. It's something he's been trying not to say for quite some time, and something that sounds idiotic after the dream he's just had, but it is still true.

"The war?" Lestrade said, slowly.

John switched off the electric lantern and pressed close against his side. "Yeah."

There was a long and immensely awkward pause as Lestrade tried to work out what to say to that, and John didn't help him. He felt as if both his throat and intestines were doing his best to strangle him from the inside and probably couldn't have forced out a coherent sentence, but more than that, he suddenly needed very badly to know how Lestrade would respond.

John pushed his palm against the side of the tent. Not canvas or oil cloth, but slick and whisper-thin. No stars outside, no dashed lines of tracers marching across the sky, no cyalumes to guide the helicopters in. In here, just his family, not twenty or thirty other men snoring or bitching or wanking or just rolling over. It was astonishing how much noise twenty people could make simply by failing to lie still.

"Okay," Lestrade said, finally.

He understood. At least a little. Enough. John didn't need to explain that he wouldn't go back now, not if it meant leaving him and Sherlock and Mycroft, or that he didn't miss the endless casualties, or the heat, or the dust, or the food.

He didn't have to say that he missed being useful, and so they wouldn't need to have the argument about John being useful now, which was good. John would lose that one, even though he felt nearly anyone could do his current job if they'd just try properly, and that it wasn't anything like actual work.

He didn't have to say any of that, so maybe he could say some of the (many) other things he'd been keeping stuffed behind his teeth for months. He opened his mouth and gave it a try.


End file.
